CHOOSING A SIRE
by Ralph E. Morrison
Originally published in "The Cattleman"
September, 1947
Much has been
written about the selection of the sire of your next year’s colt crop. However, most
of the information has dealt with generalities and nothing specific to help the novice
breeder or breeder who finds it impractical to maintain his own stud. It is to this group
of breeders that I would like to point out the importance of pedigree breeding – line
breeding.
In all breeds of livestock there are found to be dominant
individuals who advance the breed by their ability to reproduce get with a high degree of
balance. Each such individual helps to perpetuate a "family trait" to such an
extent that this trait soon becomes associated with a certain family of the breed. For
instance, some stallions are known for producing get of high speed, popular color, heavy
muscle, good temperament, endurance, cow sense or a combination of any of these traits.
It is through the span of years, with the aid of these
dominant individuals, that the different "families" become known for these
abilities or traits. It has happened in all breeds of livestock where selective breeding
is practiced.
The future of any livestock breed lies on the owner of the
good mares. They are literally the breeders; they are the ones who must decide to what
stallion they will breed their mares. The breeder who truly analyzes the pedigree of his
mares is the one who will always be improving his band. It takes good mares along with a
good stallion to perpetuate the breed and to constantly improve it. The stallion alone
cannot do it. There is a difference between registered stock and improved registered
stock. Registered stock that is not improved with each generation soon becomes grade
stock.
To the man with a small band of select mares, or the man
with only one or a few mares, I would first advise him to determine into what family his
mares can be catalogued. This can be done by determining what individual appears most
frequently in the first few generations. After having placed your mare into one of the
recognized families of the breed, then the breeder should decide what he is breeding for.
Keep the ideal well in mind. Expose yourself to good horses other than your own. You can
not be a successful breeder and stay in your own back yard. Plan only to improve one fault
at a time, keeping all other conformation equal to or better than the herd average. You
cannot do wonders in only one generation, and this brings up the thought of starting with
the best mares your money will buy. Life is far too short to grade up.
In the selection of a stallion to the above, I would advise
line breeding. Many people will shy away when this word is mentioned. Some, because of
ignorance and others because they have been misinformed. The thing to do is to have
someone explain the linebreeding theory in such a way that it will be clarified in your
mind. It is very interesting once you understand its principles.
Every real breeder knows the true value in a sire is in its
producing ability and not its visual qualities. A stallion that is linebred will do more
to improve your band in a much shorter time than one that is not. He will produce colts
more true to type in a shorter time than one that is of a hit and miss breeding. Breed a
good mare of a recognized family to the most prepotent sire of the same family and success
is inevitable. Keep the sire of your colts closely related to the best animals of the
present and the past. Let the relationship to the poor animals be diluted by the natural
halving effect of the process of inheritance. Biologically, an individual gets half of
it's inheritance from each parent. But, if one parent is dominant is dominant
and linebred, it will lean toward that individual.
Linebreeding intensifies the good characteristics as well
as the undesirable characteristics, but the law of averages will give linebreeding the
advantage. If we breed two totally unrelated specimens of the same breed, we can rightly
expect more variation in the get than if we breed two rather closely related individuals
or two from the same family. We would certainly disregard the breeding of specimens
totally unrelated since the ancestry would be somewhat of a crazy quilt and it would be
next to impossible to foretell with any degree of accuracy just what to expect. A good
stallion, one that is linebred, is more apt to give you a better colt than a stallion that
has a mixed or mediocre pedigree. Blood will always prove out in the long run.
Many will argue that a pedigree means nothing. Some say
that it is only as true as the man who signs his name below it. It does mean something
though when you find a good individual. A pedigree never made a poor horse better, but it
surely does make a good horse better. A good horse with a good pedigree does have a value
and that value as a breeder comes only in the first and second generations. Golton’s
Law of Ancestral Inheritances shows a grandparent contributes one sixteenth to the
offspring. Remember, there are three other grandparents and each of these have two
parents. Hence, the possibility of dilution of blood. Do not be mislead that an individual
is line bred if a certain individual appears only a few times in the remote generations.
His possibility of having any influence is very, very negligible.
Much thought is being given to the linebred theory of
breeding and upon investigation you will find that it is becoming more and more prominent
each year. In linebreeding we think of breeding cousins to cousins, and second cousins to
second cousins, and granddaughter back to grandfather, or some such combination. Anything
closer will be classified as inbreeding. It is only after the "good old sires or
dams" have passed on that we realize their merit and influence on the breed and if we
have not retained some of their blood through linebreeding or inbreeding while they are
alive, we will have lost their influence forever. The proof of the pudding is in the
eating, an old proverb, but just look what other breeds have accomplished.
Breeding is like running a business, you must be on the
alert or someone else will produce better individuals. Don’t use your neighbor’s
stallion just because it is convenient of because the fee is nominal. Stay with a linebred
sire that is producing colts of a high degree of balance and not just an occasional
"flyer." Select the best you can find and use him.
- Related Articles:
-
Inbreeding -- by Larry
Thornton, from his book, Pedigrees N Bloodlines
- M. L.
McGehee -- Breeder of Legends, an example of close inbreeding from the
forties that produced such great racehorses as Top Ladybug, Lady Bug's Moon,
Barnes Ladybug, etc. This is also the female line of today's first ranked Leading
Race Sire, First Down Dash.
Copyright ©2003 by Andrea Laycock Mattson. All rights
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